NEW APPOINTMENT: Peter Sandeman

The Adelaide Zero Project, an initiative aimed at ending street homelessness in Adelaide, has appointed Peter Sandeman, AnglicareSA CEO as its Co-chair alongside the CEO of Catherine House, Louise Miller-Frost. In this role, Peter will help the Adelaide Zero Project establish the South Australian capital as Australia’s first ‘zero homelessness city’.

The Adelaide CBD will join a select group of ‘vanguard cities’ on six continents to partner with the Institute of Global Homelessness (IGH) in setting ambitious but achievable goals to solve the problem of homelessness.

Launched in August at the Don Dunstan Foundation’s annual homelessness conference, The Adelaide Zero Project has adopted an approach to combating rough sleeping that has been successfully implemented by communities throughout the United States.

The project will reduce Adelaide’s homelessness rate to ‘functional zero’; a metric which indicates that a city’s homelessness services system is efficiently and effectively responding to street homelessness. In essence it’s about making sure that the system’s proven capacity to permanently house street sleepers is equal to or exceeds need or demand.

AnglicareSA has long been calling for a more coordinated and holistic approach to addressing chronic street homelessness in Adelaide.

“Mental health, drugs and alcohol, domestic violence and housing services should work together to enable each person to move out of homelessness,” Peter said. “And The Zero Project will bring together the community sector, business groups, council and government agencies to end chronic street homelessness in Adelaide.”

“Sometimes chronic homeless people are labelled ‘service resistant’. International experience shows us that homeless people are not resistant to services. The problem is the services on offer are not what are needed.”

Institute of Global Homelessness

The Adelaide Zero Project is proudly supported by the Institute of Global Homelessness. The IGH works to support emerging global movements aimed at ending street homelessness. They work with a range of strategic partners across 150 cities to create a world where every single person has a place they can call home. The IGH is the first organisation to focus on homelessness as a global phenomenon with an emphasis on those who are living on the street or in emergency shelters.